Here we discuss that school expedition of living environment study, which is widely practiced now as a course material for the first graders, has significance in forming identities and that it is actually the second graders, who are supposed to be only supporters, are the ones that take an important role in it. We examine it on a basis of “Legitimate Peripheral Participation” by Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger. As a result, it is shown that the second graders are not only supporters, but play four roles such as the “role to coordinate activities and ensure the opportunities for the first graders to participate in as newcomers” and a “role to carry on the culture of practice as a role model for the first graders”.

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There is a tendency in elementary school art education for ‘materials and tools’ to become the primary learning source. Especially, the focus on ‘materials’ has its root in the characteristics of ‘creative expression’, a skill related activity. In other words, the practical theory, that children’s creative expression develops through materials, tools, place, and the human body that drives creation, has been the deciding factor in support of such a view, including the importance of ‘rigorous selection of materials’. However, the manifestation of children’s expressional skill is also heavily dependent on physical cognitive activities such as feeling and perception towards various events as well as thought processes that alternate between examination and decision. Therefore, it is not convincing that the ‘characteristics of materials’ alone supports or leads the whole range of the generation of expressional meaning. In order to support children’s ‘creative expressional skill’, tools that support children’s thought processes according to the situations also should be counted as ‘materials and tools’, perhaps more than ‘rigorous selection of materials’, and consideration of the effective use of these new tools can become a requirement for running a class.

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In 1941, the 5th national elementary arithmetic textbook ‘Kazu-no-Hon [Book of Numbers]’ was published. I make comparison between the textbook and the previous textbook, the 4th elementary arithmetic textbook ‘Jinjo Syogaku Sanjutsu [Ordinary Elementary Arithmetic]’. Through the comparison, I revaluate the teaching materials for geometry in ‘Kazu-no-Hon’. Between those textbooks, I can see significant difference. In ‘Kazu-no-Hon’, there are the materials that students can observe the changing shapes and those relationships through moving actual objects. They are characteristic materials found only in ‘Kazu-no-Hon’. And they reflect the intention to develop children’s figural concepts before starting to learn geometrical definitions, properties and construction of figures.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate how the term “teaching materials” has been defined in the English teaching reference books. The target was 22 books published between 1978 and 2011, which were carefully chosen to avoid the duplication of the authors. The result of the analysis showed that the concept of teaching materials ranged from a broad meaning to a restricted meaning. For example, it sometimes referred to raw materials from which teachers develop handouts or present orally. On the other hand, the books theoretically based on the Oral Approach had a very restricted meaning: teaching materials had to be developed by the methodology advocated by this approach. Consequently, it seems that teaching materials might be best described as “the material carefully chosen, graded, and systematized for effective teaching.”

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The aim of this paper is to establish a checklist that evaluates the quality of student teacher training lessons. The checklist is composed of 31 items and it includes two viewpoints: lesson preparation and lesson procedure. Evaluation of each lesson is based on six distinct components: teaching skill, oral instruction, in-class decision-making, class communication, blackboard presentation and subject material (lesson content). Three judges evaluate eight lessons using the same framework. The results are as follows: 1- The evaluation results vary depending on the judges. The individual reasoning of the judges has some effect on the evaluations. Scores given for the “lesson plan” and “teaching process” segments differ from those given for other components. On the other hand, the average scores for the components of each lesson are almost the same. 2- The evaluations of the “lesson comprehension” and “lesson pace” components are higher for the second teaching practice. There are two challenges in determining the evaluation framework. One is to carefully select the checklist and the other is to refine the quality of the criteria.

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The purpose of this paper is to consider the foundation of the instructional materials that students come to be able to ask scientifically oriented questions in inquiry. Although the importance of inquiry-based learning in science class has been insisted loudly, there is little agreement about how to teach students “asking scientific questions.” And I analyze the materials of “invitations to inquiry” in the BSCS Biology Teacher’s Handbook. The useful conclusions to develop instructional materials for scientific inquiry teaching are follows: (1) the materials for asking scientifically oriented questions aim to teach students that the questions in scientific inquiry should be testable; (2) by daring to simplify the theme of the material, students’ interest is focused on understanding inquiry.

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In this study, the task examples in the German National Education Standards for chemistry were analyzed from the viewpoint of development of communication competency. As the result of the analysis, the following four points were clarified; 1) The contents of the standards related to the area of communication competency weren’t arranged systematically in the task examples. 2) Some contents of standards were associated with all task examples, others with only a few task examples. 3) On the basis of the daily life contexts, the task examples were constructed. 4) Some task examples included group activities which were emphasized on the division of roles among its members.

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When the study subject of the 1990s and the 2000s was compared, it turned out that the direction of the 2000s has been a subject based on the fact in teaching materials more than 1990s.

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